How a Board Revamped and a New Junior Board Kick-Started Giving at LatinoJustice

In the early 2000s, LatinoJustice faced a severe funding shortfall when some big foundation grants began drying up. For years, leaders of the national nonprofit had been toying with the idea of holding a capital campaign to address staffing needs and build up reserves, but it never got off the ground.

“For a long, long time, we were working on one sort of model — where you had these older, engaged activists who went out and played up the issues. A handful of foundations gave us big grants to carry out this work,” says Diana DeJesus-Medina, director of development.

At that time, the nonprofit’s donors fit two primary profiles: “movement builders,” many of whom helped found the organization, and young supporters who had benefited from its work, she says. The younger people had an allegiance to the organization but weren’t providing much funding or leadership, she says, and “our big reliance on foundation grants needed to be relaxed, frankly.”

To fix those problems, it decided to build a different kind of board.

In 2006, LatinoJustice, which advances civil rights and educational opportunities for Latinos, began recruiting younger professionals to its board. By 2009 the board comprised many Latino lawyers and corporate professionals in their 30s and 40s, plus a few members of the old guard.

The revamped board understood the value of building a network for personal and professional goals, says Ms. DeJesus-Medina. But there was still a problem: Although all of the trustees were giving, they weren’t giving a lot, nor were they asking people in their networks to give.

Fundraisers at LatinoJustice had to figure out how to get “people with new wealth and new power to understand how they can leverage that for the good of the organization and its mission,” Ms. DeJesus-Medina says. So the group provided training to help newer board members feel more comfortable as philanthropists and to help them gain confidence about asking others to give.

It educated board members, explaining that everyone should give as much as they could, and established a “give-and-get policy”: Trustees must either make a minimum donation themselves or raise it from others. Trustees who knew how to secure gifts from their professional peers served as an example for others, says Ms. DeJesus-Medina. Then they took it a step further.

Young Leaders

The group’s executives realized they still were not attracting enough donors in their 20s and 30s to sustain the nonprofit, nor were they building a pipeline of new leaders. Meeting this challenge was viewed as a long-term project with three phases.

First, they sought to involve as volunteers more of the former students who had completed the group’s educational programs. Next, they encouraged them to become donors. Finally, they helped donors understand how to recruit friends. To sweeten the deal, the group began offering these young supporters leadership opportunities.

In 2012, members of the board of directors hand-picked eight people to serve on an inaugural junior board, which was dubbed “LatinoJustice Líderes.” The líderes, or leaders, were professionals, mostly in their 20s and building their careers.

Their role was two-fold: to introduce other young professionals to LatinoJustice and to identify ways trustees could help them develop leadership skills, make professional connections, and widen their circles of influence, so both they and the organization could benefit.

Ms. DeJesus acknowledges that the first three years were “bumpy”: Trustees had great intentions but didn’t always make good use of their junior board. But soon they recognized the members of the junior board as a force to be reckoned with, and they spent time mentoring them and networking with them, she says.

Access to the board gives those who are building careers valuable professional-development opportunities, but it also helps fulfill the group’s mission. “We see the líderes as part of the legal pipeline work that we do,” she says. Part of the group’s mission is to help students graduate from high school, college, and law school and increase the number of Latinos holding high-ranking legal jobs. Giving the líderes a chance to build relationships with trustees, who are leaders in the field, is a final phase of support from the group.

Bearing Fruit

Today, the 14 members of LatinoJustice Líderes organize networking events, provide advice on communications and outreach, serve on the board’s education, marketing, and litigation committees as nonvoting members, and volunteer at events. The “outsider insiders” says Ms. DeJesus-Medina, also bring new thoughts and energy, making committees more robust.

They helped a new program get off the ground this year called “Next Generation Líderes,” in which they serve as mentors to high-school and college students interested in pursuing a law degree. “We didn’t realize when we set out that we would strengthen our mentorship programming,” she says.

The effort is yielding new leaders as well: An inaugural co-chair of the junior board, now a partner at a law firm, has joined the Board of Directors. And he serves as the board liaison to the “líderes.” Others are likely to follow, says Ms. DeJesus-Medina, “We have our eyes on a few others.”

The financial benefits are clear, too. “Now we have a lot more of these young, up-and-coming professionals and community members who are more involved with the organization and who are also giving because now the líderes are also directly asking; they’re becoming solicitors.”

In one campaign, the young leaders helped attract 200 new small-level donors, she says. The increase in small gifts is also due in part to a more powerful social-media presence, driven by young supporters. Today, the organization recruits and raises money online. For example, it recruited 500 volunteers nationwide to be present at voting sites on Election Day to help people who felt their voting rights were being violated.

The junior board now has a “give-and-get policy,” too (with lower giving levels than for the trustees), so their gifts have increased as well.

“All of these pieces are coming together, and a big part of that … is “the glue” of these young professionals,” Ms. DeJesus-Medina says.

A Better Balance

Today the organization employees 22 people and has an annual budget of $4.1 million. Private dollars represent a far larger share of the budget than before. Gifts from individuals have grown from 5 percent of revenue in 2012 to 30 percent today; 10 percent of gifts come from donors under age 40.

That means the organization is less dependent on grant makers. In 2012, 76 percent of its annual revenue came from foundation grants, 70 percent of that from one foundation. Today that number is down to 55 percent, and the largest foundation grant makes up 15 percent of the budget.

LatinoJustice just completed a $5 million capital campaign, which enabled the group to open and staff a regional office in Orlando, Fla., retire the mortgage on its headquarters in New York City (this payoff is reflected in this year’s $4.1 million budget), and strengthen its reserves.

The campaign also fueled some additional growth beyond the stated goals: the opening of a satellite office on Long Island, two new education programs, and a new Criminal Justice Reform project.

Looking back, Ms. DeJesus-Medina says, the organization was missing a big opportunity with young people before the junior board was formed. “We were getting people passionate about what we were doing, but we weren’t tapping them to come in and do anything with us.”

Today that has changed. “We found a way to get them engaged that also helped build up the infrastructure of the organization,” she says. “They have filled critical gaps in the organization” and helped meet the “challenge of finding leaders early enough so that we are their first priority,” she says. “They really just needed someone to tell them, ‘Hey, we need you, and this is how you can help us.’ And they’re doing it.”

5-Year View

Through a revitalized board and a new junior board, LatinoJustice built up its individual giving and decreased its dependence on foundation grants. In 2012 individuals contributed a mere 5 percent of the annual budget; today they make up 30 percent. Its fundraising has grown in other ways, too. It has seen:

• a 26 percent rise in giving over all
• a 49 percent increase in board gifts
• a 54 percent jump in the number of donors
• 66 percent growth in its annual budget